Alphone de
Lamartine 'Manifesto on Europe' (1848)(sent to France's
representatives abroad on his appointment as foreign minister of the new
Republican government)

from Lamartine, History
of the French Revolution of 1848, II, translated from the French,
London, 1849, pp. 3 ff.

You know the events of
Paris – the victory of the people; their heroism, moderation, and
tranquillity; the re-establishment of order by the co-operation of the
citizens at large, as if, during this interregnum of the visible
powers, public reason was, of itself alone, the Government of
France.

The French revolution has
thus entered upon its definitive period. France is a republic. The
French republic does not require to be acknowledged in order to exist.
It is based alike on natural and national law. It is the will of a
great people, who demand the privilege only for themselves. But the
French republic, being desirous of entering into the family of
established governments, as a regular power, and not as a phenomenon
destructive of European order, it is expedient that you should promptly
make known to the Government to which you are accredited, the
principles and tendencies which will henceforth guide the foreign
policy of the French Government.

The proclamation of the
French republic is not an act of aggression against any form of
government in the world. Forms of government have diversities as
legitimate as the diversities of character – of geographical situation
– of intellectual, moral, and material development among nations.
Nations, like individuals, have different ages; and the principles
which rule them have successive phases. The monarchical, the
aristocratic, the constitutional, and the republican forms of
government, are the expression of the different degrees of maturity in
the genius of nations. They require more liberty in proportion as they
feel equality, and democracy in proportion as they are inspired with a
greater share of justice and love for the people over whom they rule.
It is merely a question of time. A nation ruins itself by anticipating
the hour of that maturity; as it dishonours itself by allowing it to
pass away without seizing it. Monarchy and republicanism are not, in
the eyes of wise statesmen, absolute principles, arrayed in deadly
conflict against each other; they are facts which contrast one with
another, and, which may exist face to face by mutually understanding
and respecting each other.

War, therefore, is not now
the principle of the French republic, as it was the fatal and glorious
necessity of the republic of 1792. Half a century separates 1792 from
1848. To return, after the lapse of half a century, to the principle of
1792, or to the principle of conquest pursued during the empire, would
not be to advance, but to regress. The revolution of yesterday is a
step forward, not backward. The world and ourselves are desirous of
advancing to fraternity and peace.

If the situation of the
French republic in 1792 explained the necessity of war, the differences
existing between that period of our history and the present time
explain the necessity of peace. Endeavour to understand these
differences and to make them understood by those around you.

In 1792 the nation was not
united. It may be said that two nations existed on the same soil. A
terrible conflict was kept up between the classes who were deprived of
their privileges and the classes who had just conquered equality and
liberty. They dispossessed classes coalesced with captive royalty and
jealous foreign powers, to deny France her right to revolution, and by
invasion to force back upon her monarchy, aristocracy, and theocracy.
At the present time, there are no distinct and unequal classes. Liberty
has enfranchised all. Equality in the eye of the law has levelled all;
fraternity, whose implementation we proclaim, and whose blessings the
National Assembly will administer, will unite all. There is not a
single citizen in France, whatsoever may be his opinion, who does not
rally round the principle of the Fatherland before every other
consideration, and by that very unity France is rendered invulnerable
to attempts and alarms of invasion.

In 1792 it was not the
whole body of the people who made themselves masters of the Government;
it was the middle class alone that wished to exercise liberty, and to
enjoy it. The triumph of the middle class was therefore selfish, like
the triumph of every oligarchy. The middle class wished to secure to
itself alone the privileges acquired by all. Accordingly it was found
necessary to create a powerful diversion against the advent of popular
supremacy, by urging the people to the field of battle, and hereby
preventing them from taking part in their own government. This
diversion was war. War was the ardent wish of the monarchists and the
Girondins; but it was not desired by the more enlightened democrats,
who, like ourselves, were anxious for the genuine, complete, and
regular reign of the people themselves; comprising under that
denomination all classes, without exclusion or preference, which
compose the nation.

In 1792 the people were
made the instrument of the revolution, but they were not its
beneficiaries. The present revolution has been achieved by them and for
them. The people and the revolution are one and the same. When they
entered upon the revolution, the people brought with them their new
wants of labour, industry, instruction, agriculture, commerce,
morality, welfare, property, cheap living, navigation, and
civilisation. All these are the wants of peace. The people and peace
are but one word.

In 1792 the ideas of France
and Europe were not prepared to conceive and to accept the great
harmony of nations among themselves for the benefit of the human race.
The views of the century, then drawing to its close, were confined to
the heads of a few philosophers. But at the present day philosophy is
popular. Fifty years of the freedom of thought, speech, and writing,
have produced their results. Books, journals, and tribunes, have
accomplished the apostolic mission of European intelligence. Reason,
dawning everywhere over the frontiers of nations, has given birth to
that great intellectual commonwealth, which will be the achievement of
the French revolution, and the constitution of international fraternity
throughout the globe.

Finally, in 1792, liberty
was a novelty, equality a scandal, and the republic a problem. The very
name of the people, only just then revived by Fénelon,
Montesquieu, and Rousseau, had been so far forgotten, buried, profaned
by old feudal, dynastic, and ecclesiastical traditions, that even the
most lawful intervention of the people in their own affairs appeared a
monstrosity in the eyes of statesmen of the old school. Democracy at
once spread terror among thrones, and shook the foundation of society.
But now, on the contrary, both kings and people are accustomed to the
name, to the forms, and to the regular agitations of that freedom which
exists in various degrees in almost all states, even those subject to
monarchical rule. They will become accustomed to republicanism, which
is public liberty in its most perfect form, among the more mature
nations. They will acknowledge that there is a conservative freedom;
they will acknowledge that there may exist in a republic not only
greater order, but that there may even be a more genuine order in the
government of all for the .sake of all, than in the government of the
few for the sake of the few.

But independently of these
disinterested considerations, interest alone forthe
consolidation and duration of the republic would inspire the statesmen
of France with a desire for peace. It is not the country, but liberty,
which is exposed to the greatest danger in time of war. War is almost
invariably a dictatorship. Soldiers pay more regard to men than to
institutions. Thrones tempt the ambitious; glory dazzles patriotism.
The prestige of a victorious name veils the design against national
sovereignty. The republic doubtless desires glory, but she desires it
for herself, and not for Caesars and Napoleons.

But let no misapprehension
exist. These ideas, which the Provisional Government charges you to
convey to the powers as the pledge of European security, must not be
understood as suing for pardon to the republic for having presumed to
rise into being; still less must they be regarded as humbly soliciting
that a great right and a great people may hold their place in Europe.
They have a more noble object in view, which is to make sovereigns and
people reflect, and to prevent them from being deceived respecting the
character of our revolution; to place the event in its true light, and
in its proper character; finally, to give pledges to humanity before
giving them to our rights and our honour, should they be disavowed or
menaced.

The French republic,
therefore, will not commence war against any state; it is unnecessary
to add, that it will accept war should conditions incompatible with
peace be offered to the French people. The conviction of the men who
govern France at the present moment is this: it will be fortunate for
France should war be declared against her and should she be thus
constrained to augment her power and her glory, in spite of her
moderation; but terrible will be the responsibility of France should
the republic itself declare war without being provoked thereto! In the
first case, the martial genius of France, her impatience for action,
her strength accumulated during many years of peace, would render her
invincible on her own territory, and perhaps redoubtable beyond her
frontiers: in the second case she would turn to her own disadvantage
the recollections of her former conquests, which give offence to the
national feelings of other countries; and she would compromise herself
with her first and most universal allies, the good-will of nations and
the genius of civilisation.

According to these
principles, Sir, which are the principles coolly and deliberately
adopted by France and which she avows without fear and without
defiance, to her friends and to her enemies, you will impress upon your
mind the following declarations.

The treaties of 1815 have
no longer any lawful existence in the eyes of the French republic;
nevertheless, the territorial limits circumscribed by those treaties
are facts which the republic admits as a basis, and as a
starting-point, in her relations with foreign nations.

But if the treaties of 1815
have no existence – save as facts to be modified by common consent –
and if the republic openly declares that her right and mission are to
arrive regularly and pacifically at those modifications – the good
sense, the moderation, the conscience, the prudence of the republic do
exist, and they afford Europe a surer and more honourable guarantee
than the words of those treaties, which have so frequently been
violated or modified by Europe itself.

Endeavour, Sir, to make
this emancipation of the republic from the treaties of 1815, understood
and honestly admitted, and to show that such an admission is in no way
irreconcilable with the repose of Europe.

Thus we declare without
reserve, that if the hour for the reconstruction of any of the
oppressed nations of Europe, or other parts of the world, should seem
to have arrived, according to the decrees of Providence; if
Switzerland, our faithful ally from the time of Francis I, should be
restrained or menaced in the progressive movement she is carrying out,
and which will impart new strength to the fasces of democratic
governments; if the independent states of Italy should be invaded; if
limits or obstacles should be imposed on their internal changes; if
there should be any armed interference with their right of allying
themselves together for the purpose of consolidating an Italian nation,
– the French republic would think itself entitled to take up arms in
defence of these legitimate movements towards the improvement and
nationhood of states.

The republic, as you
perceive, has passed over at one step the era of proscriptions and
dictatorship. It is determined never to veil liberty at home; and it is
equally determined never to veil its democratic principle abroad. It
will not suffer anything to intervene between the peaceful dawn of its
own liberty and the eyes of nations. It proclaims itself the
intellectual and cordial ally of popular rights and progress, and of
every legitimate development of institutions among nations who may be
desirous of maintaining the same principles as her own. It will not
pursue underhand or incendiary propagandism among neighbouring states.
It is aware that there is no real liberty for nations except that which
springs from themselves, and takes its birth on their own soil. But by
the light of its intelligence, and the spectacle of order and peace
which it hopes to present to the world, the republic will exercise the
only honourable proselytism, the proselytism of esteem and sympathy.
This is not war, it is nature; it is not the agitation of Europe, it is
the life of nations; it is not kindling a conflagration in the world,
it is shining in our own place on the horizon of nations, and is at
once to anticipate and to direct them.

We wish, for the sake of
humanity, that peace may be preserved; we also expect that it will.
There was a war agitation a year ago between France and England; the
agitation did not come from republican France, but from the dynasty.
The dynasty has carried away with it that danger of war which it
created for Europe by the exclusively personal ambition of its family
alliances in Spain. That domestic policy of the fallen dynasty, which
for the space of seventeen years has been a dead weight on our national
dignity, has also, by its pretensions to a crown in Madrid, operated as
an obstacle to our liberal alliances, and to peace. The republic has no
ambition; the republic has no nepotism, and it inherits no family
pretensions. Let Spain govern herself; let Spain be independent and
free. For the consolidation of this natural alliance, France relies
more on conformity of principles than on the succession of the house of
Bourbon.

Such, Sir, is the spirit of
the councils of the republic; such will invariably be the character of
the frank, firm, and moderate policy which you will have to represent.

The republic pronounced at
its birth, and in the midst of a conflict not provoked by the people,
three words, which have revealed its soul, and which will call down on
its cradle the blessing of God and man: liberty, equality,
fraternity. It gave on the following day, in the abolition of the
punishment of death for political offences, the true commentary on
those three words, as far as regards the domestic policy of France; it
is for you to give them their true commentary abroad. The meaning of
these three words, as applied to our foreign policy, is this: the
emancipation of France from the chains which have fettered her
principles and her dignity; her reinstatement in the rank she is
entitled to occupy among the great powers of Europe; in short, the
declaration of alliance and friendship to all nations. If France be
conscious of the part she has to perform in the liberal and civilising
mission of the age, there is not one of those words which signifies war.
If Europe be prudent and just, there is not one of those words which
does not signify peace.

Germany 1848

The Question of German Unification

Johann Gustav Droysen: Speech to the Frankfurt
Assembly, 1848

We
cannot conceal the
fact that the whole German question is a simple alternative between
Prussia and
Austria. In these states German life has its positive and negative
poles--in
the former, all the interests which are national and reformative, in
the
latter, all that are dynastic and destructive. The German question is
not a
constitutional question, but a question of power; and the Prussian
monarchy is
now wholly German, while that of Austria cannot be. . . .We need a
powerful
ruling house. Austria's power meant lack of power for us, whereas
Prussia
desired German unity in order to supply the deficiencies of her own
power.
Already Prussia is Germany in embryo. She will "merge" with Germany.
. .

Friedrich Wilhelm IV,
King of Prussia:
Proclamation of 1849

I am
not able to
return a favorable reply to the offer of a crown on the part of the
German
National Assembly [meeting in Frankfurt], because the Assembly has not
the
right, without the consent of the German governments, to bestow the
crown which
they tendered me, and moreover because they offered the crown upon
condition
that I would accept a constitution which could not be reconciled with
the
rights of the German states.

When Louis XVIII's successor was ousted by
the July Revolution, Louis Philippe came to power. Faced with constant
threats to his rule, his initial liberal approach soon turned to
oppression, however, and in the turmoil of 1848 he was forced to flee
Paris for England. As he climbed into a carriage, a strange man closed
his door. "Thank you," the king remarked. "Not at all," the man
replied. "I've waited eighteen years for this day!"